CHAPTER XVII 



THE ADVANCE TOWARD A RATIONAL WORLD 

 CONCEPTION 



AT the close of the sixteenth century and in the beginning of 

 the next, a revolution was accomplished in the thoughts and 

 ways of men. It was effected by the disclosure of new facts, 

 by the invention of new instruments, mechanical devices which 

 widened and extended the primitive faculties with which man 

 is endowed. The fore-figures in this revolution were the men 

 who devised the instruments, who dug out the facts men who 

 made permanent additions to the stock of human knowledge. 



If we were to believe literary history, the case is far other- 

 wise. It is for this reason, and for this alone, that any word 

 were needed of an extraordinary figure who claimed, and who 

 has received from the literary students of the scientific advance, 

 a pretentious place. That is Lord Bacon. There is a chapter 

 of interest which might be written, in a larger history of in- 

 tellectual development, on the worth of philosophers pure 

 philosophers, as opposed to the school of investigation and 

 experiment. If one were to put together a list of their mistakes, 

 one might be led easily to the captious conclusion that their 

 worth has been of the least. 



Than Lord Bacon there has been no more notable example. 

 Few men have ever received more fulsome eulogy ; few have 

 ever deserved it less. The work of Bacon has been appraised 

 by many a hand ; the appraisal has ranged from something 

 akin to deification to that of unmeasured denunciation. The 

 literary estimate of the author of the Great Instauration is 

 exemplified, and it perhaps reached its apogee, in the famous 

 essay of Macaulay. There are few who do not recall his glow- 

 ing lines : 



" It is by the Essays that Bacon is best known to the multi- 

 tude. The Novum Organum and the De Augmentis are much 



talked of but little read. They have produced a vast effect 



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